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Antiwork

Contract terminated over $150 in overtime

This happened almost 2 years ago, but I'm still salty. After spending half of 2019 unemployed, I landed a contract (corporate side) position one of the major tech companies (A–N). It started on March 16th, 2020 which was the week America essentially shut down. I went to the corporate office on a Monday to pick up my laptop/badge and never had to go into the office again. Learned everything remotely and initially supported a team of 3. In May, they told me I'm going to be supporting a dozen more people and this was crunch time since it was 'intern season'. Working until 11 pm wasn't unusual; I would see emails from coworkers around the clock. For the next 6 weeks, I put in over 40 hours each week, NEVER took a day off except for the 'given' holidays, which weren't paid as a contractor, but stupidly didn't ask for…


This happened almost 2 years ago, but I'm still salty.

After spending half of 2019 unemployed, I landed a contract (corporate side) position one of the major tech companies (A–N). It started on March 16th, 2020 which was the week America essentially shut down. I went to the corporate office on a Monday to pick up my laptop/badge and never had to go into the office again. Learned everything remotely and initially supported a team of 3. In May, they told me I'm going to be supporting a dozen more people and this was crunch time since it was 'intern season'. Working until 11 pm wasn't unusual; I would see emails from coworkers around the clock. For the next 6 weeks, I put in over 40 hours each week, NEVER took a day off except for the 'given' holidays, which weren't paid as a contractor, but stupidly didn't ask for overtime. Then in mid-July, as the interns were in the last weeks of their program, i had to arrange exit interviews, offers for extension/conversion for 500+ folks. I knew this was going to be a lot and only had the support of 1 other person, so I asked for 10 hours of overtime to be approved this one week. I got so much pushback I almost backed down. But I knew it was least they could do so I hung on. They came back with “5 hours is fine”, which was a total slap in the face, since I had put in 40 hours in the first 3 days (yes, 3 days of 12-15 hours). And on Friday afternoon, I got the call from my recruiter saying 'The contract with A–N is terminated because you're not a good fit.”

The following week, A–N announced record profits for the quarter in the middle of the pandemic. But yet they wouldn't approve $150 for an extra 5 hours of OT. Hope that money got you closer to space.

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